New Book Follows the Da Vinci Code With an Insider's View of Heresy

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Religious fanaticism and intolerance are perhaps the greatest evils afflicting the human race. Most of the violence in the world today and throughout history has been caused by major religions trying to exterminate those who don’t share the same beliefs. In this eye-opening memoir, author Jerome Tuccille shares the story of his intensely personal struggle with the Roman Catholic Church.

Annapolis, MD (PRWEB)March 31, 2006

A memoir by best-selling Severna Park author, Jerome Tuccille, has just been released by WinklerMedia Publishing Group in partnership with iUniverse, a unit of Barnes and Noble. Heretic is a Barnes and Noble Publisher’s Choice selection.

Religious fanaticism and intolerance are perhaps the greatest evils afflicting the human race. Most of the violence in the world today and throughout history has been caused by major religions trying to exterminate those who don’t share the same beliefs. In this eye-opening memoir, author Jerome Tuccille shares the story of his intensely personal struggle with the Roman Catholic Church.

After turning in an essay on the Virgin Birth that claimed the Catholic Church dehumanized women, Tuccille is denounced as a heretic by the dean of a Catholic college. As a result, he abandons the religion of his youth and embarks on a global odyssey through Australia, Singapore, India, Europe, and the United States. Tuccille’s adventures lead to a life of decadence and transcendental discovery.

HERETIC dramatizes a tug-of-war between the sensual and the divine, revealing the constant struggle with spiritual questions that have stirred the minds and hearts of thoughtful people since time began.

“I had officially been declared a heretic who no longer believed in the key tenets of the religion I was raised in, yet I was still afraid to violate a trivial dictum of the Catholic Church that had nothing to do with questions of faith and morals. At the time, eating meat on Friday was a mortal sin, punishable by eternal damnation. The Church would waive that rule in 1983 and allow Catholics to dine on roast beef and sirloin on Fridays without fear of spending eternity in fiery perdition. But if you ingested more than a two-ounce wedge of a bologna sandwich or a hot dog on the wrong day of the week in 1958, you were damned forever. This was a prime example of how the Catholic Church and other totalitarians extracted fealty from their subjects by demanding blind obedience to inane rules and regulations.”

Most practicing Catholics today are heretics in the technical sense of the term. They consider themselves to be “cafeteria Catholics,” accepting those tenets of their religion that make sense to them and rejecting those that don’t. Sadly, they go through life feeling guilty about it. Heretic by Jerome Tuccille will show them—and others who question religious authority—that they are not alone. They have a right to think for themselves, and no one has a right to condemn them for arriving at their own conclusions.